


nucleation point

by orphan_account



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Break Up, Canon-Typical Infidelity, Character Study, F/F, Season/Series 02 Spoilers, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2018-12-15 20:17:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11813442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It’s been a decent year, if a decent year includes at least: one prolonged demon possession, a surprise and maybe not-so-human (and not-so-sisterly) pregnancy, the revelation that she may not be so human herself, and how could Waverly forget the whole fight with Nicole to kissing Rosita to widow bite, Nicole has a wife, surprise Nicole’s still alive fiasco.(Or, it's been a no good, pretty shitty year for Waverly Earp and Purgatory doesn't know how to give a girl a break.)





	1. Chapter 1

It’s been a decent year, if a decent year includes at least: one prolonged demon possession, a surprise and maybe not-so-human (and not-so-sisterly) pregnancy, the revelation that she may not be so human herself, and how could Waverly forget the whole fight with Nicole to kissing Rosita to widow bite, Nicole has a wife, surprise Nicole’s still alive fiasco.

(Well, they did all forget but that was also Waverly’s fault and one disappeared Wynonna and Doc at the bottom of the well later she’d like to take things one incident at a time.)

In the midst of all of the forgetting and the remembering Waverly and Nicole fell into a tacit understanding of their relationship. They’re still together, nominally, because it’s easier to be together and face the looming Purgatory demon threat than to actually sit down and have a real conversation about all the shit that’s piling up around them. Unspoken between them, Waverly knows, is the thought that if they actually sit down and talk about it then there might not be a them to talk about by the end of the conversation.

And that’s without Nicole knowing that Waverly kissed Rosita. No, Waverly could blurt that out to everyone else when she thought Nicole was going to die but when it comes to actually saying it out loud to the person who needs to know? Well, as far as Nicole knows Waverly holds all the cards and Waverly is too much of a coward (when it comes to the two of them Nicole always managed to be the brave one) to correct her on that presumption.

Geez, Waverly thinks as she lays her head back down onto the bar at Shorty’s, what a tangled web she’s weaved.

“I’m gonna run out of cherries if you don’t find yourself a drinking buddy soon,” Rosita plops a lone cherry into Waverly’s recently refreshed glass of whiskey and betraying her own words puts a cherry in her own drink and clinks their glasses together.

Waverly groans and nods at Rosita’s glass. “I think you might be my drinking buddy.”

“Well, isn’t that complicated,” Rosita smirks in that knowing way she has that belies her many, many years on this earth. Like she’s seen this show before, knows the ending, but is happy to binge watch it for the hundredth time. “You sure you don’t want to go home tonight?”

The apartment above Shorty’s had become Waverly’s temporary home after the whole iron witch curse was settled. If she rationalized it hard enough to herself, and believe her she was rationalizing as hard as ever, she was doing everybody a favor by staying out of the way. Plus, Nicole was staying with Nedley until her apartment could get fixed back up and Waverly didn’t want to open up the can of worms on that sitcom scenario. Poor Nedley already got tortured once, he doesn’t deserve a whole helping of simmering unspoken relationship drama. The man needs his rest.

“Wynonna’s not talking to me after the whole not trusting her with the cure slash signing her probably baby daddy’s death warrant with a bonus imminent demon rising and making her disappear from the world for like, a few days.” Waverly exhales at the end of that winding sentence and takes a sip of her whiskey. She barely winces at the taste which means she’s way drunker than she meant to get. “So I can’t go back to the homestead.”

Rosita winces at the mention of Doc aka the baby daddy (Waverly thinks they might have broken up but in that messy way where people who aren’t really tethered together drift apart without using enough words to make it easy) but otherwise keeps that practiced bartending slash budding revenant bestie listening face.

“And Nicole,” Waverly takes a gulp of her whiskey because every time she thinks of Nicole it’s a rollercoaster ride in her stomach, like that feeling she used to get at the rodeo when she thought someone was about to get gored by a bull but somehow worse. “Well you know she’s staying with Nedley so.”

“I’m not kicking you out,” Rosita has major but face, like completely transparent. “But, you can’t hide out here forever. Eventually Wynonna is going to have that baby and you can’t keep her away from alcohol for long.”

Waverly doesn't have an answer for that so she keeps drinking. Rosita closed up an hour ago so it's just the two of them anyway. Rosita didn’t always require answers to her little nuggets of wisdom which was great because lately Waverly doesn't have many answers to give. Her phone buzzes on the table and without looking Waverly knows it’s Nicole. She knows it’s late enough to pretend she’s already fallen asleep instead of dealing with the message.

So she doesn’t even take a look. Waverly shuts her phone off and puts it in her pocket.

She gets drunk enough that Rosita has to carry her upstairs to the apartment and Waverly briefly revels in how strong Rosita’s arms are and then immediately chastises herself for having the same train of thought that led them to the no good, very bad kissing in the first place.

She doesn’t once try to turn her phone back on and reply to Nicole.

Waverly doesn’t want to think too hard about what that means for their relationship.

*

Wynonna’s messages come through Dolls now because while Dolls was complicit in knowing Waverly was going to find and trade Doc’s ring for Nicole’s life, Wynonna still needs him for BBD business and the betrayal of a sometimes love interest and co-worker apparently is more forgivable than the betrayal of a sometimes sister.

Waverly is the appropriate level of bitter about that.

This morning Dolls shows up to Shorty’s with a book (with instructions from Wynonna to translate and not to choke on any dust trapped in the book, which is so Willa of Wynonna that it reminds Waverly that those two were actually blood related) and a black coffee (which Waverly suspects is also from Wynonna with strict instructions to never ever mention that under threat of torture or lack of cuddles).

“Did she say anything else?” Waverly asks because lately she’s become a glutton for punishment.

Dolls looks vaguely uncomfortable and maybe this is his penance to Wynonna after all, having to become the emotional pivot between Waverly and Wynonna when he’d really really really rather not. “Nothing I’m going to repeat,” He tilts his head from side to side like he’s weighing the consequences of going back on his last statement. “Waverly…”

“That’s okay, Dolls.” Waverly swallows against the dryness in her throat that’s half perpetual hangover and half something she doesn’t want to name. “Don’t tell Wynonna thank you for the coffee.”

“I won’t,” Dolls gives her a little nod and then sweeps out of the room almost as quickly as he came into it.

Waverly dives into the translation because a) she wants to help stop the demon Clootie as much as Wynonna and the gang does and b) she’s always going to be that neglected little sister who thinks she can solve everything and make everyone love her as long as she works the hardest and does the best and knows all of the things.

Then again, she’s also the same neglected little sister who self sabotages every good thing she’s gotten from valedictorian (because it’s not like Daddy or Willa was alive or Wynonna was around to care) to Nicole (self explanatory).

She’s stuck on a phrase that’s inexplicably written in a different language than the rest of the passage and if Waverly’s a betting woman, which she’s really not, but in this case she’d hedge a bet that dissonance means it’s super important to defeating Clootie. Waverly needs all the focus (and resources from BBD) that she can get.

So, of course, Nicole takes this precise moment to stride into Shorty’s looking all tall and dashing and charming in that ‘aw shucks ma’am is that your cat in the tree, let me go save it for you’ way that comes so naturally to her. Waverly can’t stop herself from swooning just a little before she remembers everything and braces herself instead.

Nicole, ever the observant party, notices Waverly’s sudden stiffness and all of her previous charm is replaced with the guilt that’s been visibly weighing her down since Waverly stormed out of Shorty’s during Wynonna’s baby shower.

Where Nicole once would walk over and kiss Waverly, she stops short and thrusts her hands into her pockets. The action hunches her shoulders forward in a way that’s so very un-Nicole that it makes Waverly want to offer her blanket forgiveness and press the reset button on their whole thing.

Instead Waverly closes the book in front of her and ignores the fact that Rosita is staring them down out of the corner of her eye. For a revenant she’s not great in matters of deception (outside of the whole pretending to not be a revenant thing which was actually very smooth). Then again, Waverly’s more than likely half revenant and she might as well win Most Honest Purgatory 2017 for all of the secrets she’s spilled in the past few months. Current massive Rosita-based secret notwithstanding.

“Hey,” Nicole shrugs one hand out of her pocket and runs it through her hair. A nervous tick that Waverly’s seen more in the past week than the majority of their relationship thus far.

“Hey, not just for horses anymore,” Waverly stands up to lean in and kiss Nicole but Nicole ends up turning her head at the same time and so her kiss ends up somewhere high on Nicole’s cheek bone. “Okay then.” Waverly says at the same time as Nicole blurts out an embarrassed sounding ‘sorry’.

“You didn’t respond to my text,” Waverly can tell from Nicole’s voice and the way she scuffs her shoes on the floor that she knows Waverly hasn’t even looked at her text. Waverly briefly wonders if she accidentally turned on her read receipts in a fit of drunken self-destructiveness.

Waverly crosses her arms over her chest and leans back onto the bar. She nearly knocks a half-empty glass of water onto her book for her trouble. Nicole instinctively saves the book from certain ruin and that leaves her bracketing Waverly onto the bar.

Every instinct that Waverly has feels the tension that always thrums between them. She wants to pull Nicole in by the belt loop of her pants and suggest they go upstairs and lose said pants somewhere on the apartment floor. But thrumming just below that sexual tension is something wrought and bitter, filled up to the brim with too many lies and half truths and words unsaid.

Nicole backs away and Waverly tightens her arms around her body.

“Waves,” Nicole sighs and there’s not a hint of the syrupy-sweet fondness that usually accompanies her nickname. Nicole just sounds exhausted and Waverly, by proxy, feels sapped of her energy as well despite the caffeine coursing through her body. “We should talk.”

It’s worse than that time they were training in the BBD offices at the police station and Wynonna somehow missed the fact that Waverly got distracted by something Jeremy was doing and she kicked Waverly right in the solar plexus. Waverly had doubled over in pain and felt the helpless feeling of all of her air getting knocked out of her body. She stood there, knowing the only thing that she could do was feel the pain and wait for it to be over. And eventually it was over and Wynonna had felt so guilty she did pretty much whatever Waverly wanted for the rest of the day.

Hearing ‘we should talk’ come out of Nicole’s mouth, with that serious expression on Nicole’s face that was reserved for serving arrest warrants, and interrogations, and old episodes of Law and Order was a lot like getting kicked in the stomach except worse because she knew what was on the other side of getting kicked in the stomach.

But this? Waverly doesn’t know what’s on the other side of this.

*

If Waverly hadn’t seen the damage with her own two eyes she wouldn’t have known that just a week before Nicole’s apartment had been a broken, bloody mess after being attacked by a widow wearing Mercedes’ face.

The door has been replaced and put back on its hinges, there’s no trace of the blood that dotted various surfaces of the room, and Nicole even has new furniture in the living room where the attack took place.

“Nedley called in a few favors and surprised me last night,” Nicole answers the question on the tip of Waverly’s tongue. The ‘how’ and ‘how did this happen so quickly’ of it all. “I texted you last night to invite you over but…”

Nicole leaves her statement hanging and that answers the question of ‘why didn’t you tell me’.

Waverly tries to tamp down the guilt that’s inherent with avoiding even the most basic communication with Nicole lest they have to tackle their much bigger problems. She wants to ask so many more questions: is Nicole okay with sleeping back in the apartment where she almost lost her life, how was staying with Nedley and did Chrissy try to give you a makeover again, does Calamity Jane like the new couch?

Instead she stays quiet because Nicole said they should talk and Waverly remains paralyzed by the implications of that statement.

There’s a mouth watering smell wafting from the kitchen and Nicole casually mentions she’s making Waverly her favorite eggplant parmesan. It’s poisoned with that apologetic air that Nicole totes around these days and Waverly is suddenly reminded of nucleation points and hot tubs and lips that don’t belong to Nicole.

She makes herself comfortable on Nicole’s new couch that doesn’t hold the memory of them attempting to christen every imaginable surface of Nicole’s apartment during a rare weekend where no demons or revenants decided to make Purgatory their hellish playground.

(Nicole was too tall to comfortably have sex on her old couch but they’d managed to make it work and maybe it was a lucky thing that Waverly was so tiny. She doesn’t remember ever laughing so hard during sex - not that she had the most experience between Champ and Nicole. Nicole had bruises on the back of her shoulders from repeatedly hitting the arm rest but every time Waverly tried to kiss them better Nicole could only laugh and say it was all worth it.)

Nicole doesn’t try to talk to her while she cooks so Waverly sits on the couch with her hands clasped on her legs like she’s waiting to see the principal. It’s not even ten minutes before Nicole calls her in for dinner, their food carefully plated in a way that reminds Waverly of Nicole’s unbreakable Chopped addiction.

Waverly promptly loses her appetite. She has to tell Nicole the truth.

They’re both pushing their food around the plate. Nicole takes one bite, then another. Waverly watches and forces herself to take a bite so she doesn’t accidentally insult Nicole’s cooking on top of everything else. It’s as delicious as she remembers and that makes it sit like ash in the pit of her stomach.

“Nicole,” Waverly puts down her knife and fork on the edge of her plate and carefully dabs her lips with the napkin from her lap.

“After we eat,” Nicole doesn’t look up from where she’s studiously cutting her eggplant into equally bite sized cubes. She takes another small bite and, for now, Waverly feels the stay of execution.

Calamity Jane scratches herself on the leg of Nicole’s chair and purrs as she rubs against Nicole’s leg. She fastidiously avoids Waverly’s side of the table and maybe it is true what they say about animals being the best judge of character.

Nicole finishes half of her eggplant parmesan before carefully pushing the uneaten portion to the margins of her plate as if Waverly is going to judge her ability to talk based on how much of her dinner she’s eaten. All said, she’s done better than Waverly who could stomach a few bites and no more before she gave up entirely.

Waverly clears their plates off of the table, does all of the dishes by hand (because it takes longer and she’s absolutely stalling), and even puts the leftovers away. It’s all done on autopilot, remnants of domesticity she’s almost certain she’ll have to break herself of after tonight.

When she’s done she goes back into the living room. Nicole’s settled onto the couch that’s hers but doesn’t fit into Waverly’s mental picture of Nicole. Perhaps that’s fitting. Waverly doesn’t want to sit on it, she tells herself it’s because she needs all the space she can get to fit the truth between the two of them.

In reality she knows if she gets too close to Nicole again she’ll chicken out and won’t say what she knows she needs to say.

Even if that means they’ll be over.

“I should have told you about Shay,” Waverly wonders where Nicole gets the strength to endlessly and selflessly put herself out there knowing she’ll be burned when she does. “I lied to you about the DNA test because I was trying to protect you. But I lied to you about Shay because I was trying to protect myself.” Nicole resolutely looks into Waverly’s eyes. “We’re separated, it was a whirlwind thing. If anything we’re soon to be divorced good friends but I should have told you. I’m so sorry, Waverly.”

There’s bile building up in the back of Waverly’s throat while she watches how easy it is for Nicole to offer up every single truth layered underneath the lies she told. It’s the kind of bravery that earned the respect of Sheriff Nedley and the citizens of Purgatory. The bravery that Waverly fell in love with in the first place.

“I understand if you can’t forgive me. I almost died and then I came back and then I forgot you and now we remember and that glossed over everything that happened but I know you’ve been avoiding me. Waves,” Nicole’s eyes gloss over and Waverly knows it’s only a matter of time before those tears spill over. “Please, say something.”

“I kissed Rosita,” Waverly gasps after she says it and covers her mouth. It’s all very melodramatic soap opera fare and not at all what Waverly meant to have come out of her mouth. Not yet, not like this. Nicole looks like she’s having difficulty processing those three words, separately and as a whole. Waverly should be quiet, she should run out of the apartment, or hug Nicole, or do anything but keep speaking. But the truth is a slippery slope and she can’t stop the avalanche of words that flows from her mouth.

“After you lied to me about the DNA test, I went with Rosita to have a girl’s day at the spa. Dolls gave her a gift card for making his serum - that’s not really important, I guess, that’s just why she had the gift card. I was drinking alone at Shorty’s and then I was drinking with Rosita and we just went. Then there were bikinis and a hot tub and seven different flavors of infused water. We talked about my lack of backbone and then I sent that awful, awful text - oh Nicole,” Waverly breaks off her mini-soliloquy because those tears threatening to spill onto Nicole’s cheeks have fallen and Nicole is furiously working to wipe them away. “I felt so badly about myself and Rosita was there and she just has this way of making you feel really, really good about yourself and she’s so smart, you know? She said something about how imperfections are actually a necessary part of life and cracks in the glass make the bubbles and I just, I kissed her. She kissed me back and then she stopped it. It was a mistake.”

“You cheated on me. With Rosita.” Nicole’s not really talking to Waverly so much as talking at her, maybe talking past her. She’s staring like she’s looking through Waverly to some unnamed point on the wall behind her. Waverly’s never seen Nicole look so empty and she’s seen Nicole with almost all of the life sapped out of her.

“I did, I cheated on you.” Waverly says quietly because after her word vomit there’s not much left to say. Calamity Jane jumps up onto the couch and curls herself into a ball on Nicole’s lap in a rare display of openly offered affection. Nicole absently strokes Calamity Jane’s fur like she needs something to do with her hands, Waverly realizes they’d been balled up into little fists at her sides.

“When were you going to tell me?” Nicole lets the tears fall freely from her eyes now, her voice rough with emotion.

“I don’t know,” Waverly can’t make herself look Nicole in the eyes, can’t make herself be brave enough to stand up to her own cowardice and mistakes.

“You don’t know.”

“No.”

“Am I the first to know?” There’s a small amount of hope in Nicole’s eyes that maybe Waverly is a coward but she’s not a cruel one. That there’s no way Waverly would let her move around within their scrappy little family as a complete fool. That maybe there’s a way they can salvage this. Waverly still can’t look Nicole in the eyes and that’s answer enough.

Nicole carefully lifts Calamity Jane off of her lap and stands up, methodically brushing cat hair off of her lap like mechanical movement is all she has left.

“I think you should go.” Nicole picks a long, orange piece of hair off of her pants that could be her own or could belong to Calamity Jane. Waverly is oddly transfixed by the motion, suddenly she’s the one with the processing issue. She hears the words that Nicole has said but she doesn’t want to be able to understand them.

“Nicole, please,” Waverly didn’t realize she had starting crying as hard as Nicole is crying but she is and it almost feels like that time she had a panic attack, the tightness in her chest growing until it feels like someone is squeezing a hand around her heart and the persistent tingling feeling in her hands and toes. She squeezes her hands into fists and clasps them tightly around her own shaking body. “Please, don’t do this.”

Waverly closes the distance between herself and Nicole until they’re standing toe to toe and Waverly has to crane her neck to see Nicole still trying to avert her eyes. She leans up on her tiptoes and presses her forehead against Nicole’s, feels Nicole’s hand instinctively rest on the small of Waverly’s back. They’re breathing the same ragged breaths and Waverly wants nothing more than to kiss Nicole and make everything better. That’s how it’s supposed to work right?

Their lips meet somewhere in the middle like maybe Nicole’s thinking the same thing. Waverly can taste the salt of their tears mixing on their lips and she squeezes her own eyes closed to try and stop herself from crying. The hand on the small of her back pulls her insistently against Nicole’s body and Waverly allows herself to sink into the familiar comfort.

Nicole kisses her with the insistence of someone who thinks this might be the last time and Waverly swallows a sob and bunches up the back of Nicole’s shirt in her fist when she realizes that it just might be. Maybe what’s been broken between them isn’t something that can be fixed with a kiss.

Waverly almost blurts out that she loves Nicole, at once realizing that it’s just another thing that everybody but Nicole knows to be true. She almosts says it until she realizes that there’s a small amount of hope in her heart that she’ll be able to say it one day and have it mean something without the poison of the hurt simmering between them.

Nicole hunches forward and hooks her arms underneath Waverly’s leg and on instinct Waverly wraps her legs around Nicole’s waist and loops her arms around her neck. Waverly breaks the kiss to breathe and nuzzles into Nicole’s neck, biting her earlobe and feeling the shiver that runs through Nicole’s body.

She gets pressed down onto the couch and reaches between their bodies to unbutton and unzip Nicole’s jeans with one hand as she’s done so many times. The only sound filling the room is their combined breathing. Waverly tries to keep herself in the moment. Tries to focus only on the way she knows she can make Nicole feel, like somehow that’ll make everything better.

It doesn’t.

It feels more like fucking than anything they’ve done before. Nicole lets Waverly touch her but she doesn’t let Waverly touch her too tenderly, nothing soft and loving and reverent like before. She moves away from those touches until Waverly gets the memo and fucks Nicole like she needs.

They kiss, open mouthed and sloppy, hands clutching messily at the clothes they didn’t quite bother to take off.

Waverly makes Nicole come and for one beautiful moment, at least, their bodies can still work together. When Nicole returns the favor it’s like their bodies are working against each other. A mistimed rhythm they can't quite set right, all pull and no push, all take and very little give. Like Nicole wants to punish her somehow but is just good natured enough to not be able to follow through with such a wicked impulse.

That’s when Waverly realizes that Nicole might never forgive her.

When it’s all said and done Nicole climbs off of her and does up her pants without looking at Waverly. Waverly who lays there with her shirt wrinkled up and her pants undone, all her dignity left with some other version of herself.

“I’ll box up everything you left here and bring it to BBD tomorrow,” Nicole still has her back to Waverly like she can’t face what she has to do now that they’ve had sex and shared something so raw.

“Thank you,” Waverly feels the rasp in her voice and leaves it at that. Nicole doesn’t turn around, not even when Waverly starts to cry again. Not when Waverly opens the door louder than she’s ever opened a door, and well, Waverly wouldn’t know if she looked once Waverly is on the other side.

Waverly doesn’t dare replace this new couch memory with the old one, not when this one is so tainted with hurt and loss. She wants to remember Nicole smiling at her over happily earned bruises, not hurt how she’d left her.

Her eyes are rimmed red but she’s stopped crying but the time she sits in what’s become her regular spot at Shorty’s. She flags Rosita over. Rosita takes one look at Waverly and pours them both a whiskey. Double. No cherry.

She doesn’t ask about Waverly's mood.

Waverly doesn’t offer.


	2. Chapter 2

When Waverly was in high school she used to think she was going to get out of Purgatory someday. Maybe not right after high school, maybe not after a few years, but someday. After all, it wasn’t like she was the rightful Earp heir (or like she even had a good contact number should they need the Earp heir). She could technically do whatever she wanted, right? 

Curtis and Gus never told her differently and Curtis even helped her with a couple of application fees. Applying outside of Purgatory made Waverly feel less stuck than she had in her entire life. Though she could see it in their eyes sometimes, when she talked about colleges in the States or traveling abroad. The pity of two people who didn’t quite believe that was a thing she could do. Waverly brushed it off like she tried to brush off everything that didn’t quite feel right about her life. Maybe if she could be the most positive person, the most well liked person in Purgatory then eventually something good had to come back around to her.

She was accepted to a few colleges and there were a few days there where she thought this might be it, she might actually get to leave town and see what else was out there. But then it just, didn’t happen. She took some online classes here and there but never enough to even finish her history degree.

Waverly wishes there was a grand reason like she couldn’t afford it or someone got sick but she just, didn’t leave. Didn’t go to her own graduation, got a job at Shorty’s, and settled for the local rodeo hero.

Then Nicole came along to Purgatory, fresh out of the big city, like the kind of person you meet and for no reason in particular understand your life will never be the same. All of a sudden Nicole wasn’t just a glimpse of the kind of person Waverly could have known if she’d gotten out, Nicole was worldly and exciting and she wanted Waverly.

Waverly wanted her too. She didn’t always realize that’s what it was but once she did she couldn’t stop thinking about Nicole. She wishes she could go back to that honeymoon phase where they couldn’t stop pulling each other into Nedley’s office or kissing on every surface they were alone with for more than five seconds.

Before Waverly left Nicole out of Black Badge, before the demon possession, and the lies, and the lies, and the lies. Before Nicole told her that she’d bring the rest of her stuff to the station. Before they were over.

Maybe you don’t have actually be an Earp to be affected by the Earp curse. Maybe the whole damn town is cursed, suffocating every single resident with the singular feeling that happiness is barely won and always short lived. That stagnancy is the only constant state in a town named Purgatory.

Waverly comes to that conclusion somewhere between stealing a bottle of whiskey from behind Rosita’s back (nurture over nature) and falling asleep cuddling said bottle in the apartment above Shorty’s. 

She wakes up and her mouth feels like she’d fallen asleep sucking on a bunch of cotton balls but that’s nothing compared to the sour feeling in the pit of her stomach and the throbbing headache radiating through her skull. When she tries to move her body aches and she racks her brain to try and figure out how much of that is from full body sobs and how much of it she can blame on the alcohol.

Then she remembers once again what happened last night with Nicole and hedges all her bets on the full body sobs.

Embarrassment rushes through her in waves and she wants to get back into bed and pretend she never woke up in the first place. Maybe if she pretends hard enough she can make it true. Go back to bed and when she wakes up hope for some sort of reality altering demon to sweep through Purgatory and make everything right again.

(It seems a bit soon to be wishing for another alteration of reality after the iron witch but desperate times call for desperate wishes.)

Waverly tries to roll to the other side of the bed but something pokes her in the back. There’s a brief moment of panic that she’s made yet another mistake but there’s not a human in Purgatory with edges that sharp. She reaches behind herself and feels the book that Dolls dropped off on behalf of Wynonna yesterday.

She’d quickly thrown a bar napkin onto the page where she’d left off when Nicole came into Shorty’s and said they needed to talk. Throwing herself into trying to stop two deranged widows from raising their sinister demon husband seems as good a plan as any.

She just needs a tylenol and some coffee first.

Then she remembers Nicole is bringing her things to the station (because they’re broken up, they broke up, that’s real, that wasn’t a terrible dream) and she decides that the least she can do is not leave Nicole hanging.

The book can wait.

*

Tylenol and coffee prove easier to find than her motivation to actually head into the station and retrieve her things from Nicole. Last night when Nicole said she’d bring over Waverly’s things it was like an abstract concept, something she didn’t have to deal with yet so it wasn’t real. But if Waverly goes and actually takes her stuff that means it’s really over.

It was so easy with Champ. They’d fallen into something that was just there. Waverly always told herself that she loved him. She had to, right? If she didn’t love him then what was she doing spending all her time in Purgatory weaving her life around his. But then Nicole came along and Waverly realized that she barely even tolerated Champ, let alone loved him.

Kicking him to the curb had been so painlessly easy in hindsight that the hardest part was realizing she’d never get all of that time she wasted with him back.

With Nicole she mourns all of the things they could have done differently. It gives Waverly whiplash to think that’s where they’re headed, mourning the relationship instead of trying to fix things. But if there’s anything she knows having been raised an Earp it’s that some things are so broken there’s no point in trying.

Then there’s the business of Wynonna who practically lives at the station these days and is still one million percent pissed at Waverly.

So this’ll be fun.

Everyone still smiles at her like they always do when she walks into the station because Nicole is nothing if not decent and probably didn’t walk in shouting ‘Waverly Earp cheated on me and now we’re broken up please hiss at her upon arrival’. So that’s at least something.

Waverly gets the distinct feeling she shouldn’t have come empty handed. At least if she’s not welcome but carrying a box of donuts then she has something to offer people other than a convenient form to be mad at. She hasn’t been spotted yet, maybe there’s time to go back and try again.

“Waverly!” It’s Jeremy, the only person in Black Badge who could possibly be excited to see her. Though Waverly isn’t sure if that can count as an ego boost considering he’s happy to see them all of the time no matter what they’ve done.

He rushes over and pulls her into a giant hug that maybe a week ago Waverly would have wriggled out of but in this moment the human contact - without judgement or heartbreak - feels so nice that she wouldn’t dare let go.

“I’ve missed you around here. They all refuse to laugh at my jokes and they keep glaring at me, like, I get it, Jeremy do your science thing but come on,” He rambles and starts to guide her back to the Black Badge office. “And I keep saving donuts for you and then I realize, come on Jeremy, Waverly’s probably not coming today. But there are donuts for you! So that’s a good thing.”

“Thanks Jeremy, you’re the best.” A smile stretches unbidden across Waverly’s face and Jeremy matches it with his own.

The Black Badge office looks kind of like a bomb exploded inside of it with papers and books and coffee and donuts and a weird looking string map on the corkboard. What the office doesn’t have is any sign of Wynonna or Doc or Dolls, so that’s something.

“Where’s everyone?” Waverly asks, not entirely disappointed she doesn’t have to face down Wynonna but missing her all the same.

Without the gang bustling through the office it’s a really creepy little space, covered in remnants of the supernatural and otherworldly. Without everyone here it’s a creepy shine to everything that most people pretend Purgatory isn’t. Waverly often wonders what the average people of Purgatory would think if they wandered into the office and had to give up the pretense that they’re living in a normal, quirky small town.

“That’s actually a really interesting story,” Jeremy actually looks really excited to tell it for a moment but his eyes widen and he stops. “That I’m not allowed to tell you under the threat of a very painful, graphically explained, death. She was very specific.”

Waverly rolls her eyes. Of course Wynonna, about to burst with child and all, could still strike fear in the hearts of men. It’s probably some cool demon case that Waverly would absolutely be an asset on or maybe they’ve found the widows and are on their way to getting the third seal back and Waverly will be back in the fold.

Jeremy snaps out of it and walks forward to put his hands on Waverly’s shoulders. “She’ll forgive you, Waverly. She’s just got a lot going on, you know, with the baby and Doc and the widows and Clootie and--”

“I got it,” Waverly tries to keep herself from tearing up, for god's sake, she hasn’t even gotten to the real reason why she’s at the station. It’s just, Jeremy is so earnest and he looks so hopeful like maybe Wynonna will forgive her for her betrayal and everything will go back to as normal as it gets in Purgatory. Waverly pulls him into a big hug and, not for the first time, thinks about how lucky they were to stumble into bringing Jeremy into their lives.

“Have you seen Nicole?” Waverly continues, blotting tears out of the corner of her eyes with the back of her sleeve.

Jeremy nods his head. “She’s been holed up in Nedley’s office all morning.” He links his hands up behind his back. “Hey, is Deputy Haught feeling alright? She didn’t look great when she came in and she didn’t really smile or say anything to anybody today. Just locked herself up in Nedleys office and has been there since.”

Waverly swallows hard and feels sickness wash over her that has nothing to do with her hangover. “Just recovering from the widow's poison still, you know, I’ll go check on her and see if she needs anything. Thanks for looking out, Jeremy.”

Waverly power walks out of the Black Badge office before Jeremy can ask any further questions or figure out that Nicole isn’t just recovering from the poison. Though she guesses they’ll all find out sooner or later. After all, dating the Sheriff’s favorite deputy never went unnoticed so breaking up with the Sheriff’s favorite deputy probably warrants similar, if not more ill-natured, attention.

Through the blinds, Waverly can see that Nicole is staring down at Nedley’s desk. Maybe doing paperwork, maybe zoning out. Probably paperwork if Waverly knows anything about Nicole. No matter how much she’s hurting and how much she feels like shit, she’s not going to neglect her duties. Being a deputy means too much to her for that to happen.

She takes a deep breath and tries to summon all of the courage that she possesses. She’s faced revenants and demons and her own sisters and any number of uglies that go bump in the night. But Nicole? Nicole has always scared her the most.

Waverly knocks and Nicole’s muffled voice tells her to enter. A brief thought crosses Waverly’s mind that if Nicole knew it was Waverly then maybe she wouldn’t be so quick to invite her inside.

Nicole doesn’t look up at first, just mumbles ‘whaddya need’ and continues working on the paperwork she has neatly organized on the desk.

Waverly clears her throat and Nicole’s head snaps up so quickly that whiplash has to be a real concern. Nicole’s eyes widen and her body sinks even further into the chair.

“Waverly,” She trails off. “I wasn’t expecting you yet.” The last part is mumbled like it wasn’t quite meant for Waverly’s ears but Nicole couldn’t keep the thought internalized.

Nicole doesn’t move to get up out of her chair and as an afterthought Waverly shuts the door to Nedley’s office in case this gets messy again.

(She doesn’t even dare to hope for a repeat of yesterday on the couch because Nicole doesn’t even look like she wants to get near her, let alone touch her.)

“I’m here to get my stuff and then I’ll go.” Stating the obvious seems like the safest, least emotionally wrought course of action. If Waverly sticks to the facts maybe she can get out of her with her stuff and without causing a scene.

At the core they’re both emotional people and even now Waverly can feel it simmering under the surface of what can barely be called a conversation. Waverly doesn’t want that to boil over, not while Nicole’s working. Waverly crossed that line before, kissing Nicole while she was working because she couldn’t help herself. Not even enough to respect the clearly drawn boundaries that Nicole set for their relationship. It caused nothing but trouble for Nicole with Tucker and look where that led.

She couldn’t even blame that one on demon possession. Sometimes she just wants things so badly she doesn’t consider the consequences until they’re right there staring her down.

Nicole stands up from Nedley’s desk and grabs the keys to her cruiser. “It’s out in the cruiser.” She motions for Waverly to follow her and wordlessly Waverly does.

She trails behind Nicole and can’t help but see the weight that’s been placed on her shoulders. Waverly remembers the first time she ever saw Nicole striding into Shorty’s, strutting almost, brimming with the confidence of someone so sure of themselves. The confidence of someone who so easily knocked Waverly’s universe of its axis with a few well placed quips and a smile that Waverly isn’t sure she’s ever felt completely balanced since.

Nicole then was larger than life, tall and broad and everything Waverly knew she wanted but never could picture until she saw it in real life. Nicole now seems smaller, turned into herself, minimized. Waverly’s not so foolish to think that she’s unchanged either. She remembers herself, so naive and bubbly, like a bright light shining through Shorty’s and emanating throughout Purgatory. Trying to will this damn town into being what she wished it could be, not what she was stuck with. Now she feels darker, exposed to the ills of the world and inevitably changed because of it.

It’s like an out of body experience watching Nicole unlock the car, pull out a larger than expected box, and place it carefully in Waverly’s arms. The box is heavier than Waverly expected. She doesn’t even remember leaving so much at Nicole’s apartment but maybe that’s what it’s like when you just fit so perfectly with another perfectly. You can’t notice how quickly and completely your lives have become entwined because it feels like the natural order of things.

Which makes disentangling those lives feel like forcibly ripping out a part of yourself that belongs there. Like using a dull rusty knife to perform open heart surgery without anesthesia.

The box feels like everything and nothing in her arms and maybe Waverly’s gone numb. Nicole looks like she’s caught between wanting to comfort Waverly and wanting to go seclude herself back in Nedley’s office until Clootie brings the apocalypse and subjugates them all.

She settles for reaching out and tucking a wayward piece of Waverly’s hair behind her ear. Waverly nudges into the touch and for a brief moment time slows down and everything is as it should be. Even the slightest touch from Nicole starts to heal what’s broken.

And then Nicole pulls her hand away and Waverly feels like she’s been doused with ice water. She almost drops the box, settling it with her knee, and working it back into the right position. Nicole gives her a quick nod that reminds Waverly of the fact she used to wear a stetson, used to tip that hat at Waverly and smile, and oops now she’s really sad and about to cry in front of the station holding a box of her things that she really really wishes she didn’t have back.

Nicole looks like she’s about to cry as well so she power walks back inside the station, presumably to quarantine herself in Nedley’s office and pretend none of this is happening.

Every instinct Waverly has wants to follow Nicole, comfort her, and make it better. But then Waverly remembers that she would only make things worse and forces herself to stay in the same spot. It’s not easy to unlearn all of those instincts that made them so good together when things were good.

It’s not easy to watch Nicole walk away. 

Waverly takes her box and her broken heart to start the walk back to Shorty’s. She tries to mentally send Rosita her drink order because if Purgatory can’t give her normal lineage or a normal fucking day, maybe it can at least give her telepathy and a drink waiting for her at the door.

She’s gonna need it.

(Just thinking that Wynonna would be so proud makes Waverly cry the rest of the way to the bar.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is officially canon divergence from this chapter on thanks to the beauty that was 2x11.


	3. Chapter 3

Waverly knows there’s only so much mileage to be gained from an endless cycle of drowning her sorrows at Shorty’s and listening to the saddest Spotify playlist she can find. And there’s really only so many times one person can warble through a cold and broken hallelujah before it’s time to shower and try to move forward with their life.

Sure, it’s been a few days since she cried all the way to Shorty’s holding a box of her things and sure, she has neither seen nor heard from Nicole in that time because, duh, that’s how breakups work. Because they’re people who used to be together now. That’s fine, that’s absolutely fine (it’s totally not fine and she tries to ignore how manic her inner monologue has become since, well, since Nicole got bitten).

Waverly puts a box around those kinds of negative, unhelpful thoughts and tries to push them far, far into the recesses of her mind where she can deal with them later.

With the imminent resurrection of Clootie (whether or not Wynonna wants to accept that she needs her help), now isn’t really the right time to break down. Not that there’s ever a good time to have a complete breakdown but this is a worse time than most.

She should be translating the book that Dolls brought over or storming into the Black Badge offices and demanding that Wynonna call a cease fire to their fight or doing something more than staring at the book and wishing she had the energy to work. Waverly doesn’t know how (non-pregnant) Wynonna does the whole alcoholism and action hero thing because Waverly doesn’t even need to be as active and she’s struggling.

She’s struggling hard.

(Maybe that’s another superpower afforded the Earp heir that Waverly will never acquire, the ability to process alcohol like it’s water.)

“I’ve got twenty dollars on the book,” Rosita sweeps past Waverly with a teasing tone.

Waverly squints up at her. She feels the little crinkles form between her eyes and spares a brief moment remembering Nicole thinking that those were cute. Nope, nope, she doesn’t have time for that.

“You know, in the staring contest you two are having.” Rosita laughs and starts wiping down the bar, carefully avoiding the precious ancient text. “The book wins every time.”

“Oh, ha ha.” Waverly rolls her eyes and lifts up her arms, and the book, so Rosita can clean underneath her. “How’d you get so funny?”

“Over one hundred years of practice.” Rosita says low enough so it’s only for Waverly’s ears. She winks as she drapes the rag over her shoulder and leans forward on her elbows to cradle her chin in her hands. “How about I get you a nice glass of water, on the rocks, so you can get to work.”

Waverly makes a low, teasing ‘ooooh’ sound and feels herself smiling hard for the first time in a few days. “Can you make that a double?”

“I don’t know, I’ll see what I can do,” Rosita laughs but nonetheless fills a tall glass with ice and water from the tap behind the bar. She plops a little umbrella on the top and slides it across the bar in front of Waverly like someone who saw Cocktail one too many times. “Hey, where’s my tip?”

“Stay in school,” Waverly deadpans to the woman with two hard science doctorates and one Scorpio-driven astrology certificate.

Rosita shakes her head with a smile and moves on from Waverly to attend to the rest of Shorty’s daytime regulars. After all, depriving those loyal men and women of their before-noon spirits might actually be a crime in Purgatory.

This leaves Waverly with the same problem she had before her brief reprieve sponsored by Rosita, mainly, she still has to translate that passage. She opens back up to the page she left off on and stares at the line where she got stuck before Nicole walked in a few days ago. It’s written in a language she hasn’t quite seen before. She stares at the mixture of letters (in a non-helpful mixture of cyrillic, arabic, and some carefully placed lines and strikes that could possibly be sumerian) and symbols.

She stares and tries to think about all of the ancient language classes that she took, and there were many. In all of those classes she had never came across something like this. She stares at it and lets her vision blur in and out, zones in and out on the page like somehow the answer will jump out and bite her.

She should know better and avoid those kind of thoughts, it’s Purgatory, if she thinks it hard enough the words just might jump out and bite her.

Without a definitive conclusion her thoughts drift off to the Black Badge office, to the fact that if she’d only waited for Wynonna to follow through on her promise to cure Nicole she could be doing this there instead of alone at the bar. It’s not that she didn’t trust Wynonna to follow through on her word, well, it’s not entirely that she didn’t trust Wynonna. In her defense, this whole Wynonna being all trustworthy and reliable is a fairly recent development and not all that concrete anyway. Not that she doesn’t love her sister, she just knew her a certain way for a lot of years. It’s hard to break expectations like that.

And it was Nicole’s life on the line. Nicole. It’s amazing what the human mind can justify under the right circumstances. In Waverly’s mind it wasn’t a betrayal so much as what needed to be done, consequences be damned. But now living with those damned consequences, no, Waverly would choose Nicole being definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent alive every single time.

Still, she wonders exactly how long Wynonna can stay mad at her. Wynonna left town for years and didn’t even bother to tell Waverly that she was coming back. Just swept back into town when Curtis died and let Waverly stumble upon her with a shotgun in hand. All to say, their history of communication isn’t exactly award winning. In fact, Waverly can think of a few therapists that would love to sit the remaining Earp sisters down for a session or ten. 

Maybe this was the final straw and Wynonna will never forgive her.

Waverly shakes those thoughts from her head because it’s neither helping her translate nor helping her keep that positive, chipper state of mind that gets her through the days without breaking down. Not that she feels particularly positive or chipper but maybe if she lies to herself long enough it’ll trick her brain into thinking she is.

Before long she’s drank her entire glass of water, had a few more staring contests with an ancient tome, and people watched until old John in the back corner of the bar caught her eye while she was zoning out and winked at her. Waverly decides that’s as good a sign as any it’s time to call it quits for the moment and go do something else. 

Literally, anything else.

*

It’s a nice enough day, the kind of day where she would usually make lunch for her and Nicole and then coax Nicole to give up the paperwork for half an hour and eat outside. Not every single time it was nice out but enough that Waverly feels a pang just thinking about it. 

Nicole would act so put upon when she showed up with food in a basket like some kind of cliche but Waverly always knew that she couldn’t resist the romance of a spontaneous lunchtime picnic. There was something so peaceful about Nicole in those moments. Nicole who bore the weight of the citizens of Purgatory on her shoulders but let all of that go around Waverly. Sure, being a deputy was her job and it was her job to care about the people of this town but one of the things that Waverly loves about her is that she would care even if it wasn’t.

Nicole always cared so much about her too. She was always so attentive, always checking in on Waverly and asking all of the right questions. Sometimes Waverly felt like it was too much, she’d never been in a relationship like that with somebody so attentive. Hell, she was lucky if she could get Champ to even ask about her day let alone check in on her emotionally.

Maybe Waverly took that all for granted. No, Waverly knows she took that for granted. She would shoot a revenant through the knee right now just to have Nicole hold her in arms and ask her if she’s okay. But that’s not going to happen, Waverly wraps her arms around herself and continues her aimless walk down main street.

She’s got her head down, kicking a little pebble down the street as the only thing keeping her from sinking into a shell of her own thoughts when she runs right into a solid body. She stumbles but there’s large, strong hands on her shoulders immediately and Waverly looks up to see a bushy mustache and Doc’s trademark hat staring down at her.

“Waverly, you may want to keep your eyes up while you are walking down the street,” Doc gives her a big smile and Waverly reflexively hugs him tight before she can think too hard about it.

“Doc! I’m so sorry, I wasn’t watching where I was going.” Waverly pulls back sheepishly. She tries to quash the urge to ask every single Wynonna question she has. (She definitely tamps down the urge to check in on Nicole through Doc, she doesn’t want to have that conversation with him for about a million and a half reasons.)

“It seems to be that kind of day. I just ran into your deputy and she was not too keen on watching where she was walking either.” For a moment Waverly thinks that maybe Doc is reaching for information but then she sees his smile doesn’t change, there’s no hint of that devious twinkle in his eyes, and a different sort of dread takes hold.

Of course Nicole didn’t tell anybody about their breakup and since nobody is really talking to Waverly, save Rosita, for all intents and purposes Nicole is still ‘her deputy’. Jeremy might suspect something is up after the last time she was in the Black Badge office but he’s basically the human equivalent of sunshine and puppies so he’d never jump to that conclusion.

She’s taken too long processing this and Doc tilts his head to give her a curious look. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No, no, absolutely not, you didn’t say anything wrong I’m just... thinking?” The way her voice climbs up the pitch later as she keeps talking isn’t exactly meant to inspire confidence. 

“You do not sound so sure about that.” Doc’s mustache is damn near tickling the underside of his nose at this point and the look matches his furrowed eyebrows well in all their confused glory. 

“It’s about a translation, you know, foreign languages. What do they all mean?” Waverly giggles nervously and traps her hands together behind her back. If Wynonna was here she’d immediately call this out as Waverly’s act cute to get away with a blatant lie routine but Doc doesn’t know her so well and thinks too highly of her anyway. “Anyway, I should be going. You know, the books don’t read themselves.”

“Thankfully not.” Doc agrees and rests his hand on the hilt of his gun.

“Well, it was nice to see you. Have a nice day!” Waverly tips an imaginary hat at Doc and immediately kicks herself for acting so awkward. He’d old, not stupid. If she keeps acting weird he’s going to eventually catch on that something is weird. Naturally.

“Wait,” Doc rests his hand on her shoulder and Waverly stops to look up at him. “I am most certainly overstepping my place in this matter but Wynonna misses you. She may shoot me for saying so but it is worth the risk.” He takes his hand off of her shoulder and tips his hat at Waverly. “Good day, Waverly.”

Doc walks past her towards Shorty’s and leaves Waverly staring at the space he just vacated with her jaw hanging open. In her mind, she hears a voice that sounds like Gus telling her she’ll only catch flies like that and snaps her mouth shut.

Wynonna misses her. She might actually shoot Doc for telling Waverly about it, she knows her sister enough to realize that’s not an empty fear but the important thing is that there’s a chance. Part of Waverly wants to hightail it to the station right now and tell Wynonna she misses her too. The part that was ignored by her parents and shunned by Willa and abandoned by Wynonna for most of her life tells her to hold her horses.

Maybe it was obvious the way she’d been sending Dolls to give her messages and the equivalent of Black Badge homework assignments. Maybe Waverly had been so wrapped up in everything Nicole that she didn’t see a reconciliation was more than possible, it was probable.

Waverly starts to walk again, this time with her head held a little higher because there’s a chance that not all is lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I did not mean to leave y'all hanging for that long! I just got a new job and my writing time went away considerably. But don't worry, come hell or the demon Clootie this fic will be finished.


	4. Chapter 4

So, here’s the thing.

Even with Doc’s not-so-subtle urging, Waverly doesn’t end up at the station to reconcile with Wynonna. She thinks about it, she thinks about it hard. Gives the idea not one, but _two _whole passing thoughts before she finds herself frozen on the sidewalk.__

__Not literally frozen, though that’d be easier to justify than cowardice and inaction. The truth is that Waverly knows Doc is right and maybe that’s the thing that scares her the most. The fact that she could put together part of her life is somehow more daunting than letting it all slowly (and quicker still) unravel._ _

__Letting her life unravel has been, somehow miraculously, almost no work at all. One lie, a little bit of mistrust (backed up by a lifetime of fuel for said mistrust), a kiss (it was only a kiss, only a kiss), maybe a few more small lies (mostly to herself) and voila. Train off the tracks, her life as she’s known it on the rails._ _

__Putting said life back together? That requires initiative, chutzpah, various other snappy synonyms for words that indicate she’s going to have to put her nose to the grind, bust her ass, and take an active role in this whole mess._ _

__Maybe she should pull a Wynonna circa most of the years after she shot Daddy and ditch town. Throw a bunch of her shit in a bag and take off without telling a single soul, leave Purgatory and the thought of reconciliation, widows, and the like behind. It would be so easy, it should be so easy. Run away from her problems in the most Earp way she knows how, with the added bonus that she can leave town without the Ghost River Triangle giving a flying fuck._ _

__At this point she’s either completely burned or set fire to all of the bridges that lead to the things she cares about most in this town. By the time those fires got attended to she would be long gone without even the hint of a trail. Free._ _

__But would she really be free? Judging by the fact that even the Earp most suited to running away from her problems had felt compelled to come back to Purgatory, no. Granted, that was in response to Curtis and his untimely death but still, the demons (literal, in this case) had brought even the irreverent Wynonna Earp back to town. Waverly, with all of her worry and her damn conscious probably wouldn’t make it a month before she felt the pull to come back._ _

__And yet, Waverly couldn’t drag herself to the station to start to fix things._ _

__She considers going back to Shorty’s and letting Rosita drown her in alcohol and maybe once the booze has taken over her she can finally become a woman of action. Then again, any action she might be compelled to take while off her ass drunk probably isn’t the type of action she should be taking. And considering kissing Rosita set off a chain reaction of questionable actions that haven’t exactly worked out in her favor, maybe she should hold off on that particular companionship._ _

__(Not that it is any way Rosita’s fault that Waverly was feeling mad and spiteful that night and not that it negates the fact that Rosita has been an excellent friend since, it’s just, it doesn’t feel right to the small portion of Waverly that’s foolish enough to think Nicole might forgive her someday.)_ _

__Waverly feels her body moving on autopilot while her mind is stuck in some sort of introspective version of time travel, zooming through past mistakes and speculating on future escapes that will surely not come to pass. When she snaps out of it she realizes that she’s walked all the way to Nedley’s house._ _

__She stares up at the beat up white door that could use a couple of coats of new paint and probably could use being a whole new door in general. Nicole’s staying back in her own apartment now, Waverly knows that all too well. It’s not like her body brought her to this house to confront that. But then again, she’s been coming to the Nedley house when she’s upset for longer than Nicole’s been in the picture._ _

__Waverly’s been coming here since she was 12 years old at the start of her somewhat improbable friendship with Chrissy Nedley. She cracks a wry smile at the thought of how their whole friendship is predicated on Waverly’s quick temper and penchant to attack bullies with weapons - back then a large stick to the crotch, now she much prefers her shotgun._ _

__Their friendship wasn’t always the most smooth thing in the world, with Chrissy’s love affair with the mean girls in high school and Waverly, well, being an Earp. She’d sometimes felt left out socially but at the core of it Chrissy had one of the best hearts that Waverly had ever known. Even if Waverly wasn’t always included in the parties, Chrissy always made time for her. She even pushed Waverly to join the cheer squad with her, which, looking back on it had gone a long way to take Waverly from remaining member of the town weirdos to town sweetheart._ _

__Maybe at her current rock bottom she’s reverted to things that have always worked for her. Chrissy, and the Nedley house, chief amongst them._ _

__She knocks hard on the door, remembering how insulated the inside of the house is if you do anything less than absolutely slam on the door. And don’t even bother trying to ring the doorbell, Nedley had been ‘meaning to get to that’ for as long as Waverly can recall. At this point, it’s nothing more than ornamental decoration and, perhaps, the cherry on the top of his small town sheriff aesthetic._ _

__There’s no immediate answer but Waverly knows that’s sometimes the case even when Chrissy is home. She knocks again, practically wailing on the front door to the point where she pulls back her arm to see the blossoming red blush start to form down the side of her hand._ _

__Waverly waits a few more moments before she gives up. It would just be too perfect, wouldn’t it? If miraculously Chrissy was home at the exact moment that Waverly’s indecision carried her back to her old safe spot. It would be something that could only happen in a perfectly plotted film or one of those long, dense novels that Waverly liked to throw herself into when dealing with real life got a little too much to handle._ _

__What was Waverly even hoping would happen? Maybe Chrissy would open the door and mistakenly think that she was there to see Nicole, Waverly would shake her head, those big Disney tears forming in her eyes and Chrissy would have her arms open to catch her before Waverly even fell into her arms._ _

__Maybe Waverly wouldn’t have to say a word, Chrissy being one of her oldest and most loyal friends would be able to extract all of the pertinent information solely from the psychic connection of old friends. No words, no actions, just unconditional comfort and support._ _

__Waverly wouldn’t have to explain that she’d kissed Rosita and betrayed Nicole or made a deal with the devil and betrayed Wynonna or been a complete coward since and been slowly betraying her sense of self in the process. Chrissy would simply know and have the perfect thing to say and then the swelling music would start and Waverly would know exactly what to do._ _

__Throw in one cliche, “Go to her,” from Chrissy and Waverly thinks she’s fallen asleep to that particular film on late night network television a couple of times before. Waverly's not even sure which her Chrissy is telling her to go to in this fantasy, just 'her'. Maybe both of them. Fantasy is always less concrete than reality anyway._ _

__Or, more realistically, Waverly gets carried by some emotional, instinctual force to Chrissy’s house. She knocks and knocks. Nobody is there. There is no magical moment, no swelling music, or easy answers, and once again, she’s stuck with the reality of the situation._ _

__So, she does the only thing that makes sense._ _

__She goes home._ _

__*_ _

__Okay, so she doesn’t dramatically walk all of the way to the Earp homestead because Waverly is interested in penance and forgiveness and atoning for what she’s done but she’s not about to literally torture herself in the process._ _

__She stops at Shorty’s and thanks Rosita for all that she’s done. Rosita gives her a sad look like she knows this is probably the last time she’s going to see Waverly in a long while, a sad look that intimates she understands and she’s been there and it makes Waverly feel like shit that it has to be that way because her faults are her own._ _

__Then again, her faults seem to have more and more collateral damage these days. What she wouldn’t give to be one of those rare, self-contained people who only fucks themselves over when they fuck everything up. What she wouldn’t give to be able to magically fix everything like she’s that stupid infomercial tape and her life is a boat incidentally sawed in half._ _

__Instead she’s taking on more and more water and drowning everyone who dares to try and help._ _

__Her stuff is arranged neatly upstairs like Rosita expected the moment she left, it might be for the last time in a while. It’s sweet in the sort of maudlin way Waverly’s started to view the world. She stubbornly carries it all in one trip because she can only bear the knowing nod Rosita gives her on her way out once._ _

__With all of her things packed into her jeep, she _finally _does the only thing that makes sense.___ _

____She goes home._ _ _ _

____*_ _ _ _

____Waverly’s expectations go as such: she passes through that old rickety wooden gate with ‘Earp’ haphazardly scrawled on a nameplate, parks her car where she always parks it, carries her stuff instead in one trip as a point of pride, and takes a nap in her old bed. When she wakes up refreshed, feeling like her old self, or at least not like her new self, she then faces the day with a level of agency she hasn’t achieved in days._ _ _ _

____Instead, she passes through the wooden gate and immediately her stomach ties itself into great big fairy knots. The impending feeling of dread is only exacerbated when she looks properly onto the front porch._ _ _ _

____Sometimes the more you try to avoid the inevitable things in life, the more the inevitable chases you down until you’re forced to confront it in the most uncomfortable way possible. That’s the problem with inaction, it sets off a chain reaction of action, action, action. But this time, you’re the counterpuncher. Always on the back foot, floundering under the blows raining down on you with no feasible escape in sight._ _ _ _

____Waverly doesn’t bother to try and unload the jeep as she steps out. Wynonna’s leaning placidly against the wooden column, spinning Peacemaker on her index finger. She makes eye contact while she blows non-existent smoke off the tip of the barrel and then holsters the gun at her side._ _ _ _

____“Hey, baby girl.” The left side of Wynonna’s smile quirks and she rests one hand on her pregnant belly and the other on her holstered gun as she lets the post hold up her weight._ _ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot say how sorry I am it took me almost two months to get another chapter up. My life has been absolutely hectic but I reiterate that this story will be finished even if it takes me forever to do it. Don't give up on me!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm hoping to update twice a week until it's done. Come talk to me at ambassadorofchill on tumblr.


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